Reginald Walter Macan, Herodotus, The Seventh, Eighth, & Ninth Books with Introduction and Commentary

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τοὺς ἄρχοντας ἔχειν, τοὺς δὲ ἀρξομένους οὐκ ἕξειν, ‘to have commanders, but not to be going to have the men to obey their commabds.’ A good jibe, under the circumstances, at the expense of the punctilious, not to say insolent deputation, and possibly authentic, Gelon being something of a wit. (Cp. c. 156 supra) The Athenians, however, before long might have held Gelon a false prophet; the development of the Delian confederacy had already made this prediction look rather foolish, years before Hdt. wrote it down. Cp. also c. 163. 5.

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οὐκ ἂν φθάνοιτε ... ἀπαλλασσόμενοι, ‘you would not be too soon in departing’: i.e. the sooner you go the better, depart, nothing ‘prevents’ you; or, ‘get you away at once.’ In form the substance is not ‘an urgent command’ but ‘an impatient concession,’ originally interrogative (cp. οὐκ ἂν φθάνοιμι; Kuehuer Ausf. Gramm. ii. p. 627 An. 12).

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ἐκ τοῦ ἐνιαυτοῦ τὸ ἔαρ αὐτῇ ἐξαραίρηται, ‘the spring has been taken right out of her year,’ ‘she has had the spring taken right out of her year.’ Author or glossator goes on to explain the metaphor, for it is not quite à propos. The spring is in the year to start with: Gelon's forces were not among the actual, but only among the potential forces of Greece; the question had been of getting them in, not of taking them out. Yet this criticism may seem hypercritical, until we discover the same metaphor used with entire proprietyas is twice recorded in Aristotle: Rhet. 1. 7. 34=1365A Περικλῆς τὸν ἐπιτάφιον λέγων, τὴν νεότητα ἐκ τῆς πόλεως ἀνῃρῆσθαι ὥσπερ τὸ ἔαρ ἐκ τοῦ ἐνιαυτοῦ εἰ ἐξαιρεθείη: 3. 10. 7=1411A Περικλῆς ε<*>φη την νεότητα τὴν ἀπολομένην ἐν τῷ πολέμῳ οὕτως ἠφανίσθαι ἐκ τῆς πόλεως ὥσπερ εἴ τις τὸ ἔαρ ἐκ τοῦ ἐνιαυτοῦ ἐξέλοι. The Periklean use of the trope is flawless: ἔαρ : ἐνιαυτο<*>ς :: νεότης : πόλις. Aristotle twice fathers this bon mot upon Perikles. It does not occur in the Funeral Oration in Thuc. 2. Did Thucydides fail to report correctly? Without prejudging that question, Perikles may have used the phrase in an oration after the Samian war (439 B.C.), or another. But was Gelon then the author of the phrase, and that in a bungling application. afterwards corrected by Perikles? Or has Hdt. or his authority transfeired the mot from the Athenian orator to the Syracusan despot? Or was the metaphor as old as the hills, and in use for ages before Gelon and Perikles (cp. ver sacrum)? Aristotle's citations do not favour this fancy; he plainly thinks Perikles the inventor of the phrase. Hdt. is quite capable of mixing his metaphors; cp. c. 152 supra. As he transfers a meal-bag from the starving Chians to the homeless Samians in 3. 46, so here he has robbed Perikles to enrich Gelon. Rose, indeed (Hat Herodot sein Werk selbst herausgegeben? p. 17), denies all connexion between Herodotus and Perikles in regard to this phrase: such a negation were hard to verify! and even if established, would not prove Gelon guilty of the ‘derangement of epitaphs.’ A similar metaphor, correctly used, is to be found in Eurip. Suppl. 447-9, and (in Athenaeus 99 d) Demades went very near to plagiarize Perikles in calling ἔαρ δὲ τοῦ δήμου τοὺς ἐφήβους. The treatment of this passage as a scholium manifestum makes practically no difference to the pioblem of the authorship and application of the mot.